TwistLit Bicycle Lights: Product Review

The TwistLit from NiteIze is a unique and colorful bike light that attaches to your bicycle with the use of two twist-able rubber gear ties, rather than with a plastic or metal mount that must be screwed or bolted into place. The TwistLits come in a number of different colors – white for the front, red for the rear, and a special multicolored light (just for fun).

I used all three lights during my summer and wintertime cycling exploits this last year and here is what I thought of these affordable lighting products:

Like pretty much all battery operated bicycle lights, the TwistLit is good at getting other people’s attention. It is bright enough for cars, pedestrians and other cyclists in your area to see and take note of you. But the lights are not nearly bright enough to use for navigational purposes. In other words, the lights are good for personal safety, but aren’t strong enough to allow you to see where you are going in dark environments.

I found the TwistLits to be very easy to attach (just wrap the gear ties around your handlebars or seat post and then twist them together to secure the light in place).

From the front, the light looks pretty good. You almost don’t even notice it mounted on the front of my handlebars.

After a short amount of time riding with the lights in place, I did notice that the light on the front of my bicycle would begin to slip and fall over time. The gear ties, it seemed, were slowly wiggling themselves loose – possibly from the vibrations created by the bicycle or the road surface. This was a little unnerving at times because I did fear on occasion that the lights might fall completely off my bike – but they never did.

Unlike the front light, which is white, the rear TwistLit shines a red light and mounts to the bicycle with two red (almost pink) colored gear ties. Even though I appreciate the fact that the red gear ties allow me to quickly and easily differentiate the rear light from the front one, I don’t like how obvious the red gear ties are once they are mounted to my bicycle.

From the back, the light looks pretty good mounted to my seat post.

But when you look at it from the other direction, you can see how the gear ties are fastened together in a chaotic manner and the mess is accentuated even more by the red coloring on the gear ties. If the gear ties were black in this instance, you might not notice the light at all.

I rode for at least 6 months with the TwistLits on my bicycle. I rode with the white one in front, the red one in back and the multi-colored Disc-O light on the back as well.

The white and red lights have a solid and flashing mode, while the Disco-O light has a strobe feature that slowly rotates from one color to the next. It also has a flashing mode and I found it to be quite fun to have mounted on my bicycle for others to see.

Overall, I think the TwistLit is a good product at an excellent price point – less than $10 USD. They are easy to mount and remove from the bicycle and they can even be attached to a backpack or pannier, should you choose to use them in that way.

The fact that the gear ties create a mess on the backside, however, and wiggle themselves free over time due to vibrations from the road, means that these unique bike lights won’t be for everyone.

However, for the individual who wants a fun, inexpensive, easy-to-mount bicycle light, the TwistLit is a high-quality, long-lasting piece of cycling gear.

The TwistLit is available at www.niteize.com and at Amazon.com in white and red.

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